Anderson Artists Guild member Sharon Jacobs got hooked on photography early. “My parents gave me a little Brownie camera for Christmas one year,” she said. “I loved it. I took pictures of everything, even if there was no film in the camera.” A Chicago native, she started night school at Northwestern University while working full time as a secretary at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center and eventually completed a degree in graphic arts years later. “But I’m still drawing st

As a child in Saratoga, New York, Michelle Winnie drew all the time, including on the back of her parents’ drapes, behavior which landed her in trouble. She enrolled at Brockport University as an art major and a goal to work as a graphic artist. But the man she met during orientation week—her future husband—laughed when she stated her major, and she ended up following him into biology and a career as a high school science teacher. That education ended up being not only enjoya

Joseph Peragine, the juror for the upcoming show at the Anderson Arts Center, considers himself a painter but works in several mediums, including sculpture and installations. As a painter, he works in acrylics, oils, and watercolor. He has a BFA from the University of Georgia and an MFA from Georgia State University and teaches drawing, painting, and printmaking at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He chooses materials based on the concept he’s trying to get across. “I usu

Nancy Basket showed some of her work and discussed her experience as a basketmaker at the Anderson Artists Guild meeting on March 9. Born in Washington state, she has lived in Walhalla for 21 years, having come to the South to learn its stories and to use its natural resources—especially kudzu—in her craft. “I make whatever is in my backyard or available locally,” she said. She has made many things from kudzu—not just baskets. One creation was five-foot lampshades that mimick

Nancy Basket may not have finished the art education degree she started at Blackhawk College in Moline, Illinois. She may have learned instead, as she says, through “the school of hard knocks.” But this woman is an artist and art educator extraordinaire. She became intrigued by basketmaking 40 years ago, and soon afterward met a Cherokee man who sold pine needle baskets shaped like bears. She asked to buy one, but he said, “Your job is to make them.” She’s been doing that eve